


The Scion and the Outcast

by starlurker



Category: As the World Turns
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-03
Updated: 2011-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlurker/pseuds/starlurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The Advocate</i> interviews Luke and Reid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scion and the Outcast

  
  
November 2011 issue

THE SCION AND THE OUTCAST  
Gay Life in Small Towns Series  
Part Three: Oakdale  
by Felicia Minghella

 _After the grim circumstances of Ranchette and the undercurrent of hostility in Sturgis,  
Felicia Minghella is surprised to find a tiny slice of (relatively) non-discriminatory  
small town America, but Luke Snyder and Reid Oliver's unique circumstances aren't for everyone._

 

  
Luke Snyder (l) and Dr. Reid Oliver (r) in a candid moment. "I hate pictures," Dr. Oliver states.  
Photographs of them together are few and far between, but Snyder is launching a campaign  
to change that immediately, and has taken an unflattering picture of Oliver as blackmail material.

Oakdale is immediately different from the other towns I've visited for this series, and I can't help but wonder how Marian and Deena from Ranchette or Michael and Sam in Sturgis would react to it. What is readily apparent is that Oakdale has a tremendous amount of wealth flowing into it, and that it's easily the biggest of the small towns that I'll be travelling through for this series. The town has a developed commercial district and even a small airport. It's a hotbed of business activity, both legal and questionable: the heads of both Worldwide Enterprises and Grimaldi Shipping reside in this sleepy hamlet. Unlike Ranchette and Sturgis, small towns both reliant on agriculture, Oakdale thrives on a variety of industries, many of them successful enough that the average income per household is an astonishing $75,000. Clearly we're in rarefied air.

Even more unusually in Oakdale, two of its most prominent citizens are openly gay men in a committed relationship. That's not all: one of them is a multimillionaire with his own shipping company, the other a renowned neurosurgeon.

I met with Luke Snyder, nee Luciano Eduardo (Grimaldi) Snyder, in his office in downtown Oakdale. He's a slender man with a cherubic face possessing a good, strong handshake. In his suit and in his element, he's strikingly attractive. "Call me Luke," he says warmly. His office is minimalist and warm, personal touches consisting of an array of photographs of his family dot the space. An exquisite map of the world -- "an antique," Snyder states, "bought by my biological father" -- takes center stage on his office wall. "It's the one of the few things I've kept that belonged to him," he adds. He looks at me with a resigned expression on his face. "If you've done your research, then you know why."

Snyder has a convoluted past. He is the product of a perplexing series of entanglements involving his mother and his two fathers, biological and adopted. His biological father, the infamous Damian Grimaldi, is a non-negotiable subject and will not be discussed unless he brings him up directly. He was an alcoholic who has held on tenaciously to his sobriety for years, but not before suffering serious kidney problems. His ex-boyfriend's father, in a fit of homophobic rage, caused an accident that briefly paralyzed him. He is a multimillionaire who donates a significant amount of money to gay and lesbian rights. This is common knowledge about him, which makes for a fascinating question: if this is what's public, what has happened behind closed doors? Snyder's no fool however -- he immediately shuts down any question that attempts to probe deeper into his personal life.

"I thought this would be an article about how gay men's lives are in Oakdale," he says, a stiff formality entering his voice. "I don't see what my past has to do with how I live my life as a gay man here." Fair enough, but your history in a small town plays a factor in how you're being treated right now, I say in return. "It makes some people sympathize," he admits, "but it makes just as many other people angry. This is still a small town. I'm still the biological son of a criminal. I still have his money, and it doesn't matter if it was the money that he made legally. A lot of people in this town are still conservative. I just have enough money that I can get away from them, but do you really think the gay son of a famous criminal can go through life without any hassle?" He laughs with enough bitterness that ages him 10 years in a minute. "Maybe if I was in Chicago."

He collects himself, adjusting the collar of an immaculate suit. "I have privileges though, I know that. I'm still male, I'm still white and I have money and that makes up for a lot. I read your article about Deena in Ranchette and I really wanted to help her out, because I can't imagine how tough it must be to be an Asian lesbian in a really small town. She'd probably spit in my face though. I got the feeling she would hate charity or people feeling sorry for her." We both laugh because it's true: Deena would shoot us with her shotgun. "So I help out as much as I can. That's why I have my pet charities."

Figures are difficult to obtain, but it's clear that many charities are the beneficiaries of Snyder's generous hand. Oakdale has developed a reputation for being welcoming towards gay and lesbian youth, all due to a classic split-level Victorian house in Dover Street known as The Hearth that Snyder purchased. The building now houses the local chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), the Gay-Straight Alliance and serves as a halfway home for youths made homeless due to their sexual orientation. Local fundraisers receive thousands of dollars -- Oakdale is perhaps one of the few towns in the USA that can boast lemon bars that go for $10,000 due to mysterious benefactors. Most significantly, Oakdale Memorial has a state-of-the-art neurosurgery wing, complete with a brilliant, if somewhat cantankerous, chief of neurosurgery.

 

"I hate your magazine," are Dr. Reid Oliver's first words to me. "Nothing personal though."

Dr. Oliver is a man confident with his abilities, and someone who treats tact as gum he scrapes off from his shoe. I'm reminded of a key scene in the film _The Devil Wears Prada_ , in which a villainous Meryl Streep sends people cowering out of her way with a tilt of her head. Perhaps it's not quite as severe, but it's close. He's an attractive man who would perhaps be more attractive if his face wasn't so severely displeased all the time.

"There are only three people who can talk to him without an immediate eye roll," says one of his interns, who only spoke to us about Oliver under anonymity. "His fetus boyfriend, Dr. Hughes Sr., and a blonde woman called Katie. Everyone else gets condescension. If it's really bad, you get insulted right away." I thought the intern was exaggerating, but within five minutes, it's proven absolutely true.

"Luke tends to be get really gung-ho about things," Oliver says. "He got me to agree to this because he said that young gay people deserve to know that being gay isn't a relentless slog of terror. And of course that's true, because you only have to look at the bullying and suicide numbers in 2010. But it doesn't mean that this is in any way a pleasure." He answers questions with wilfully terse responses, and in between he rolls his eyes at my chosen profession. I ask him about harassment in the workplace, and he says that it's "minimal" and that he can handle it. I spend five more minutes with Dr. Oliver before making my excuses. He may be a brilliant man, but his attitude is difficult to take, and I'm forced to wonder how Snyder, who seems infused with warmth, ended up with someone as chilly and patronizing as Oliver.

"What did he say?" Snyder's voice is full of exasperated fondness apparent even over phone lines. "Let me guess. He said he hated your magazine." He sighs at my confirmation. "Listen, I can't say that I'm surprised. I hated his guts when I first met him too, but to be fair to him, I gave him a lot of reasons to hate me in the beginning. He's going to kill me for saying this, but he has a good heart. Talk to Katie, she'll tell you."

Katie Peretti is a gorgeous woman, one of the three fabled people in Oakdale who merits Dr. Oliver's good opinion. Her young son Jacob is with her when I meet her at Java, a local coffeehouse. He's well-behaved and doodles on a sketchbook that she provides for him.

"I don't have to sing Luke's praises," she says, stirring sugar into her coffee, "because Luke's good points are pretty obvious. I'm guessing you're here because of Reid." She laughs at my nod, shaking her head. Her expression of amused and resigned knowledge echoes Snyder's to a disturbing degree. "I was Reid's first friend here in Oakdale," she explains. "He rented a room at my house, so I got to know him first, even before Luke. He's so brilliant and he's so good at his job, but he's grumpy, I'll admit that." Grumpy's not the word I'd use, I say, but Peretti's eyes harden at the perceived insult to Oliver's character. "Look, you don't know him," she says, steel underlying every syllable, "but you weren't here during my fiancé’s heart crisis. You didn't see Reid and how he stepped up then. And I can't believe that a trained journalist is so easy to fool."

I beg your pardon? Peretti points a laser stare my way. "Reid isn't a softie obviously, but he has changed from the guy I knew all those years ago. He can't be the first reluctant person you've ever had to interview." She takes a sip of her coffee and looks at me above the rim of her mug. "He doesn't let people in, and he has good reasons. Watch them together and it will make sense. His and Luke's life here hasn't been easy, not when the entire town was rooting against him, especially in the beginning. Every bit of sense they make now was earned the hard way." Jacob interrupts then and says that he needs the bathroom. Peretti helps him out, and I'm left with a puzzle.

 

Snyder and Oliver's past history is an intriguing part of Oakdale and its myth of being a small town gay Mecca. Before its reputation was achieved, it went through a rough transition period. A key figure in that age of change was Luke Snyder. Not so obvious is the other key player who has now relocated to the West Coast. Noah Mayer was Snyder's first boyfriend, and in their teens, they were the _Romeo and Juliet_ of Oakdale, with a queer twist and a lack of reckless suicides. The gossip mill of the town revolved around their travails for months, as both declared their homosexuality, as parents on both sides expressed confusion, horror and disgust. It is Mayer's father, now deceased, who caused the incident that paralyzed Snyder. Regardless of Snyder and Oliver's status as upstanding gay citizens of Oakdale now, their current relationship and happiness was built on the foundation that Snyder and Mayer paved first with their blood, sweat, tears and precious moments of joy in between.

I contact Mayer via Skype while I'm in Oakdale. Googling him yields a student film called _Voices Carry Down the Water_ , which he wrote and directed himself. In the movie, Mayer plays Simon, a teen from a small town questioning his sexuality who finds himself falling in love with the rich boy. What's startling is a revealing sex scene between Mayer and Dominic Taglieri, the actor playing the rich boy, whose name is Eduardo. Taglieri is a slender man with a cherubic face, with what looks like a good handshake, if the movie is any indication.

"Yeah, there are parallels," Mayer says with a laugh. "I wish I hadn't put that on YouTube to be honest. But I felt so strongly about it, you know? It was my artistic voice, and I was working through some serious heartbreak. But everyone just talks about my ass."

Neither Snyder nor Mayer is forthcoming about their final split, but both agree that Oliver played a factor in it. Snyder was diplomatic about the split: "Noah and I had moved past a point where we could get back what we had before, and Reid only made a move on me when he knew that Noah and me were over." Mayer's more blunt: "Dr. Oliver's an asshole."

To be fair to the increasingly maligned Dr. Oliver, it's not quite that simple. Mayer was injured in an accident involving fireworks that cost him his eyesight. Snyder used every resource to get Oliver into Oakdale, who was famous in medical circles for being one of the few with the skill and knowledge to operate on Mayer to restore his eyesight. That Mayer is now a filmmaker is a testament to the work that Oliver performed.

"And I'm grateful for that, I really am," Mayer says. "Honestly, I'm still really confused about it. Here's a guy who gave me my eyesight back, but it felt like I had to pay for it with my boyfriend. And yeah, he was my ex at that point, but everything was so mixed up." Mayer shakes his head, his pain still fresh, visible even through the low quality image of the laptop camera. "How would you feel if the first thing you saw after being blind for months was your boyfriend making out with your doctor?" He excuses himself and his computer turns off.

While Mayer's story is sad, it also illustrates something remarkable about Oakdale. Out of the towns I've been to, and I suspect that this will hold as I travel all over the United States, I'm willing to wager that it will be the only small town with a gay love triangle that the whole town watched with bated breath, where the majority of the townspeople actually _picked sides_ as to who was best for Luke Snyder, instead of going into mobs and demanding that they change their wicked ways.

  
  
A rare shot of Snyder, Noah Mayer, and a smiling Dr. Oliver before things went irrevocably bad in 2010.  
"That will probably never happen again," says Snyder.   


 

My next interview with Oakdale's gay couple extraordinaire would take place at their new home, a beautiful detached house surrounded by trees and selected by Snyder himself. He is perhaps one of the few millionaires in the world who chose to live with his parents despite his wealth. Meanwhile, earlier this year when Katie Peretti's fiancé proposed, she informed Oliver that he would have to move out, which he took with his characteristic style.

"He said, 'Is he still playing the sympathy card because of the heart thing?'" Peretti said during our earlier conversation. "So I smacked him on the head and told him to man up with Luke. He kept on resisting it. 'What will this town do when their golden boy shacks up with Dr. Satan?' was one of his more memorable questions."

At their dinner table, with a box of meat lover's pizza between us in their just-finished kitchen, Snyder smirks when I tell this story, while Oliver frowns and bites an enormous chunk of his pizza. "He's doing that because he knows he'll say something he'll regret," Snyder says. "It's progress."

"Not funny," Oliver says with his mouth open, and just as appalling as it sounds.

Snyder turns serious then. "I think it's a good sign of progress here in Oakdale," he says, his demeanor reflective. "A lot of people didn't see it, but I was harassed a lot when I first came out. A lot of people asked me if I was sure. My dad was amazing, and so was my mom, but things weren't good between us for a little while. When Noah got together with me, people would make comments about me tricking straight people. I mean, from what I've read of your other articles, it was nowhere near as bad as other places, but when you're going through it, it feels like a lot."

I don't think Oliver is aware of it, but his posture softens after Luke's done speaking. He wipes his hands on a napkin and his right hand clasps Snyder's face. It has the look and feel of a ritual, because Snyder leans into the hand. They exchange loaded glances and then seem to remember that they're not alone. The customary stone face of Dr. Oliver settles back in, and he grabs another pizza slice.

It's a peek, and it's a start. It's clear that Oliver has one vulnerable spot: Luke Snyder. Any responses I take from Oliver will have to come from how he reacts to Snyder, because it's clear he won't give me any time of day on his own. Not unless he's asked very nicely or bribed in some way.

I ask them what it's like to be highly visible gay men in a small town, and surprisingly, it's Oliver that answers first.

"Tough, but probably tougher for Luke. He cares more about what people think." Snyder nods at this. "I usually don't care, but I came out of the closet much younger than Luke did, so I've had more time to care less about what people think."

"It helps that you're amazing at what you do," Snyder says. Oliver bestows a rare smile on his partner.

"Medical school was tough too, and that was in a big city. There were a lot of people who would make comments about not wanting a gay guy to operate on them, or that I would give them AIDS. It's changed since then, but I still run into it. Not as often anymore, especially here." Oliver shrugs. "Maybe there is something to this small town family BS that Luke keeps harping on about." He keeps talking over Snyder's objections. "Truth is, this is probably the least homophobic place I've ever lived in. Which is remarkable to me, considering Luke's status in this town, his money and the age difference between us. If you're not a completely worthless reporter, I'm sure you've heard about Luke's ex-boyfriend, who was basically a puppy in human form. Put that on top of everything else, and it's surprising that I got as little flak for it as I ended up getting."

It's not immediately apparent looking at them, whether it's because of Oliver's youthful looks or Snyder's hard-earned maturity, but there is a 12-year age gap between them. The interns at the hospital call Snyder fetus behind his back. Oliver gets called more: chicken queen, cradle robber, gold digger. That's on top of the usual homophobic comments, and some personnel have been upfront enough about their dislike for Oliver to call him all those names to his face, or so some of his interns say. If this is true, Oliver has given no indication.

"It used to bother me," Snyder says rather gingerly about the age difference. "My life is all sorts of screwed up, but that doesn't mean a whole lot."

"Luke is smarter than most of my group after seven years of neurosurgery practice," Oliver says. "It pisses me off that people expect me to only find people with PhDs attractive, that they think their kind of smart is the only smart that matters. It pisses me off even more that people think I'm after his money, but then, those people are idiots. I'm with Luke because he's hot." Snyder covers his face with his hands and groans, and it's hard to get anything more out of them after that.

The evening ends like this: Dr. Oliver says "You're not awful" to me. Snyder gives me a friendly hug and says he'd like to see a copy of the article before publication, which is an easy enough request to grant. I thank them for their hospitality and go to my car to think.

 

On my last day in Oakdale, I get a call from Dr. Oliver. "Don't break his heart with this article," he says. "If you break his heart, I'll find a way to get you."

I have a theory about him, this skilled surgeon with the rattlesnake mentality. I think he's being unlikable so that people will focus on him instead of Snyder -- it's some bizarre form of protection. That's just my theory though, gleaned from scant information disclosed during three brief meetings.

I'll visit many more cities for this series of articles about gay life in small towns. I'm sure I'll encounter countless heartbreaks, brutal fights and meaningless deaths. But gay life in Oakdale proves to me that exceptions exist in the small town paradigm. Both Luke Snyder and Dr. Oliver will get harassed in ways that other people see and won't see, but they'll get through it. If there's a theme that has risen from my articles, it's that love is powerful and works in ways that are completely unexpected.

As I drive away from Oakdale, it's cliché, but there's a glorious sunset behind me. It bathes the town in golden light, making it seem mystical and not altogether real. Maybe it isn't. The town disappears from view in a few minutes. The road beckons and it leads me forward once again.  
___________________________________________  
 _Felicia Minghella is a regular correspondent for_ The Advocate. _Her writing has appeared in_ Rolling Stone _and_ Details. _Her debut novel_ Dance of the Light Fandango _will be published by Scribner next year._

 

THE END


End file.
